Not ONLY Google vs Microsoft
John Paczowski summarizes it well: Google’s leaders can finally stop pretending that the company doesn’t have designs on Microsoft’s core PC software business. On Thursday, the search sovereign said it had acquired Upstartle, makers of Writely, a browser-based word processing application.
I don’t have a whole lot to add to this, except the following list of horizontal software services companies - big and small - who need to watch out for what’s to come after the core Office Suite is completed: Salesforce.com, Plaxo, Webex, Citrix, SixApart, … (you fill in some blanks, please) … whose SOHO and SME businesses are likely to get hurt quite badly.
The enterprise, I think, will continue to want to have data on their own drives, and not on Google’s, but it is in SOHO and SME that this battle will be fought, and …
Oh! It Will Be a Bloody Battle.
Interesting projection beyond Office.
(Speaking of Office, I haven’t seen a collaborative PowerPoint app or service yet)
And now, Google’s gone and acquired SketchUp.
A geo-browser ecosystem in the making?
-Aparna